UPPER MADISON AVENUE
KURT SCHWITTERS—Chalette, 1100 Madison Ave. at 82nd St. Schwitters dabbled in Dada before embracing an equally nutty style that he labeled Merz. This retrospective of his Merz-drenched collages suggests that yesterday's Dada is today's Pop. Through Nov. 30.
REX CLAWSON—Royal-Athena II, 1066 Madison Ave. at 80th St. Clawson mixes nerve with verve in wax-oil-and-casein commentaries on politics, crime, Mom and libido. Not a fig leaf in the show. Through Nov. 9.
AINSLIE BURKE—Kraushaar, 1055 Madison Ave. at 80th St. Eighteen tranquil landscapes—New England's surf, dunes, marshes and headlands—that are well-mannered but far from banal. Through Nov. 9.
ART OF TUSCANY—Duveen, 18 East 79th St. A sumptuous show including a Fra Angelico Madonna and Child and a Masolino Annunciation that have never been shown in the U.S. Also works by Giotto, Botticelli, Delia Robbia, Francesco di Giorgio. All but the Giottos are for sale. Through Dec. 31.
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI—Perls, 1016 Madison Ave. at 78th St. Twenty-two paintings and two pieces of sculpture. Among the oval-faced, almond-eyed portraits are two of British Poetess Beatrice Hastings. One painting, Le Garçon Rouge, has never been shown in New York before. Through Dec. 7.
RONALD SEARLE—Bianchini, 16 East 78th St. Searle has sharpened his pen for a vorpal bit of vivisection; the victims of his Anatomies and Decapitations in ink-and-wash—flatulent beldames with clinker eyes, lopsided popsies with liquid-cherry smiles—belong under glass in St. Trinian's biology lab. Through Nov. 11.
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG—Castelli, 4 East 77th St. Newest turn in the Pop cycle is the technique of enlarging colored photographs and transferring them to canvas by a silk-screen color separation process. Rauschenberg laces it all together with splotches of paint; the result is something like a battered billboard. Through Nov. 21.
ALFONSO OSSORIO—Cordier & Ekstrom, 978 Madison Ave. at 76th St. Twenty-nine panels on which seashells, fake pearls, links of rusty chain, hunks of bone (with glass eyes staring from the marrow), shards of mirrors, jaw teeth, driftwood and other flotsam have become mired in puddles of plastic glue. Gaudy, repetitious and faintly emetic. Through Nov. 9.
ALBERT BIERSTADT—Florence Lewison, 50 East 76th St. These 24 paintings by a master of mammoth landscapes come as a surprise. Not only are they small (the largest is only 11½ in. by 15⅜ in.), but their simplicity makes them almost abstract despite being 100 years old. Through Nov. 30.
HIRAM WILLIAMS—Nordness, 831 Madison Ave. at 69th St. Williams' people are dough-faced cyclopes, chuckling dwarfs, malevolent freaks, some of them impeccably dressed in J. Press suits, all unkind to mankind. Through Nov. 9.
ANTONI TAPIES—Martha Jackson, 32 East 69th St. Lumpy canvases filled with shapes hacked and gouged out of rubberized marble dust have a grim sobriety that evokes the sun-parched Catalan world the artist lives in. Through Nov. 16.